Among all of the chatter about foods you have to give up when going vegan - pizza is often assumed out of the question. Well folks, I'm here to tell you it's not! You can have your vegan pizza and eat it too!

Adam and I have been vegan for over a year and a half now and one of the foods we were happy to find a solution for was pizza. Before we were vegan we would usually make our own pizzas from scratch but it took us some time to realize duh: make a pizza without the cheese, just add extra toppings and there ya go! If you haven't made a pizza from scratch before I highly recommend, it's very therapeutic and rewarding. Especially this pizza because its so good for you with all the bell peppers, onion, and garlic.

Although there are options out there for vegan cheese we try to avoid products with soy and choose to make more whole-food meals rather than using processed vegan food. And honestly this pizza is so amazing as is, you don't need the cheese, real or fake. Hence why we call it magical.

First we'll start with the dough part of the recipe. This is actually a bread dough recipe that we use for many different baked goods (hand pies, pizzas, cinnamon rolls, etc). I used this recipe in my bread machine on the dough setting for the pizza but if you have some time you can make this yourself from scratch, as we used to do before we got a bread machine. We use a BreadMan bread machine that we bought 'like new' from The Salvation Army for $3 and its been working great for over 2 years now. So if you're looking to try one without the risk you could check out your local secondhand store and if it's not your cup of tea you can just donate it again. Every bread machine is different so bare that in mind if you use this recipe in yours. The finished dough makes about 2 med/small thin-crust pizzas or one large one. We personally like to roll our dough into cookie sheets and make rectangle pizzas verses round ones for the convenience of using regular pans and putting it onto a rectangle cutting board. Although feel free to make your pizza any shape or size your hearts desire! Heck make 10 mini pizzas if you want to! It'll be great for parties.

Vegan (Pizza) Dough

1 Tsp Salt

2 Tbsp White Sugar

2 Tbsp Olive Oil

1 Cup Warm/Hot Water

3 Cups All-purpose Flour

1 Tsp Yeast

DIRECTIONS:

Mix flour, salt, yeast, and sugar in a large bowl. Add the oil and water, mixing well until combined.

Flour a counter top, table, or large cutting board. Make sure to have an extra handful or so of flour off to the side of your floured surface available for you to grab from because the dough will be sticky. Flour your hands and place the dough onto your floured surface. Sprinkle some flour over your dough. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes, re-flouring as necessary.

Using a brush, paper towel, or your hands, oil your large bowl and place your kneaded dough inside. Cover with a warm damp towel and let the dough rise for 1-2 hours.

Flour your surface and hands again. Place dough onto your floured surface. Using a rolling pin, roll out your dough into desired shape then place it on a floured pan.

If your kitchen or other part of your home is warm, place your pizza there to rise. If not, you can warm up your oven for a few minutes then turn it off and let your pizza rise inside the oven. Let your dough rise for about 20-30 minutes (too long will make the pizza more bread-like and less dense like pizza dough). Once done rising, move on to toppings and we'll carry on from there.

Now that we have the dough all talked about let's get onto the toppings! The amount of toppings listed below is to make two evenly topped pizzas. If you use the dough recipe to make one large pizza, instead of two thin medium ones, you will have yourself a fully loaded pizza. You can also make two batches of pizza dough in separate bowls to have two evenly covered large pizzas, which is what I did using my bread machine's dough setting twice.

Vegan Bell Pepper Pizza

Pizza Sauce, approx. 14 oz per pizza

1 Red Bell Pepper

1 Green Bell Pepper

1 Onion

2 Cups Spinach

6-8 Garlic Cloves

1-3 Tbsp Olive Oil

Salt and pepper to taste

OVEN:

Preheat oven to 350F, 177C

DIRECTIONS:

While your rolled out dough/crust is rising, chop the bell peppers, onion, and spinach to desired size. Mince or press the garlic cloves.

Setting aside a third of the spinach, place the rest of the chopped toppings into a large bowl and add the olive oil, salt, and pepper. Spoon a few scoops of pizza sauce, about 3-4 tablespoons, into the bowl as well. Mix until evenly coated. Set aside.

Once Your dough is done rising, spread a desired amount of pizza sauce over your pizza. Then sprinkle the sauce-covered toppings evenly on top of that. Finish off the toppings with the spinach that was set aside. If you are making two pizzas only use half of the spinach that was set aside to top each.

BAKING:

Bake each pizza one at a time in the middle rack for 25-35 minutes depending on your oven, or until the pizza crust is fully cooked and the center is no longer 'wet'.

I made everything roughly the same small size so that when you eat you're not pulling off all of the toppings.

This isn't all of the spinach I chopped, in total there was about two cups.

I threw everything in a bowl, added the olive oil. Next adding the salt, pepper, and a few spoonfuls of pizza sauce to hold it all together on the pizza.

I rolled out the dough then put it onto my floured baking tray.

Feel free to use your favorite sauce or make your own. If you don't have pizza sauce you can get away with using spaghetti sauce and adding in more oregano.

I think it adds a nice bit of texture keeping some of the spinach to top off the pizza.

This magical vegan pizza is enjoyed by vegans and non-vegans alike. Try it out and let me know how it goes! Good luck, I know you can do it!